


A Tongue of Silver and an Attitude to Match

by Hanzohara



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Eventual Romance, Inkheart Inspired AU, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, With some twists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-09 06:54:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15261852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hanzohara/pseuds/Hanzohara
Summary: There are two sorts of people in the world: those with the ability to truly read from literature, and those who cannot. Those who can have a solid place in society, as government officials, as military personnel, as police officers and other kinds of public servants. Shuichi Saihara is not one of those people, but oh, does he so dearly wish he was.---An AU inspired by the Inkheart Trilogy





	1. Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you unfamiliar! Inkheart is one of three novels in which the protagonist as well as his daughter have the ability to read from books and bring characters to life! This AU is loosely based on this idea, with a couple added mediums from which one can bring things to life! As of yet, I don't have a set update time ;-; It'll update as I am able, and as I feel comfortable with!!

It’s genuinely surprising how easily even the most driven can be crumbled down by an hour or so of ceaseless droning. Even the most astute of students have begun losing the will to keep themselves focused. There’s no shortage of distractions among the rows and rows of seats and the curved desktops of the room. Constant tapping of pen and pencil tops, numbering at least in the tens or twenties, lack any real impact or synchronization to make the lecturer call it out, so they’ve been going on since half an hour into class. Some people have completely zoned out, or disassociated even ( that poor girl in the pink sweater-vest has been staring at the wall for the last forty-five minutes and must well and truly be gone ). 

There are those that have even crossed arms, moved their binders, shed jackets, and made some matter of pillow to fall asleep on. Unfortunately enough, there’s a nearby student that is deep into his sleep that he’s begun snoring. Not enough to be noticeable by those in the front row, or even the professor for that matter, but enough so that a good deal of the left half of the room has festered a quiet agitation. A couple students even excused themselves to the bathroom, and have yet to return.

Shuichi prides himself on being a relatively well-focused student, has been since his uncle enrolled him in a private high-school, and even he’s having trouble focusing on the lecture at hand. He’s already become one of the people whose started arrhythmically foot tapping against the carpet, and he’s honestly about ready to join the legions of those tapping their nails against the tabletops ( he highly doubts the scores of other students in the lecture hall will mind anyway )

Not to dig at the professor of course, he’s clearly very passionate about what he’s teaching and it’s undoubtedly knowledgeable. He’d even gone so far as to get permission from whoever the higher ups were to receive one of those educational-use reading pendants. Even from here, Shuichi can see the silver chain and charm resting over the professor’s suit.

The only thing keeping the stationary form of Attila the Hun, stood ramrod stiff in the center of the stage, from completely vanishing from reality.

It’s meant to allow for a deeper level of understanding, he knows, but Shuichi can’t help but stare at the figure with a fair bit of jealousy. He wasn’t fortunate enough to be born with the ability to read out things, not many were. Those that do usually got jobs related to the military, the government something high up, and were far more stably employed than those that couldn’t. He couldn’t even legally receive an aid like the pendant the professor has until he was formally initiated into a government organization.

Just thinking about it is enough to make the drumming of his fingers quicken, and his lips pull into a dissatisfied frown. Suddenly the prospect of sleeping, or dissociation into the next dimension like that other girl is far more appealing than silently brooding about his uncontrollable faults. Slowly, Shuichi’s gaze falls from the powerpoint and the figure from the history book to his notepad, well-written lines of notes, and various smaller asides written in the margins.

He’s never been particularly fond of people who spend their time in class glued to their phones, but he supposes the desperate times called for desperate measures. From his pocket, a blue cased smartphone is procured and is promptly set down over his notes. Fingertip is pressed to the home button, and it unlocks, and Shuichi is all too quick to open up the Google app.

Let it not be said that he’s disregarding lessons for some stupid reason, like that guy two rows forward and one seat to the left that’s been playing some anime rhythm game since class began. A quick search yields the results he’s searching for: the most recent in a string of attacks on various different institutions across the country. At its simplest form, terrorism against those that use artificial means of reading out of books.

It’s such a waste.

Instead of using their gift, one they were so lucky enough to be born with, for good, to better society and greater purposes, what do they use it for? The attempted mass murder of anywhere from a couple of high ranking businessmen to hundreds of thousands within school environments. Shuichi’s been told many a time that this sort of view is far too altruistic to be anywhere near realizable. He can’t really help it though, if he had the ability he would definitely use it for the sake of bettering society. There was no small number of characters from novels he’s read that he’s certain would help his uncle’s detective agency more efficiently solve crimes. That, and their close-knit link with the police could do so much good around the country.

Shaking his head and muttering quietly beneath his breath, Shuichi tries clearing his head once more. He’s leaning more toward that pit of brooding again, and he certainly doesn’t want to be more aggravated than the rest of the left half of the classroom. A quiet glance up in hs direction reveals that, at the very least, the sleeping student has ceased snoring, and had instead opted to muffle himself in his arms.

The Google app is quickly slid up and out of the screen in favor of clicking open his mailbox. It takes a little bit of digging through useless updates, offers and bank notices to find the email his uncle sent him attached with their most recent information on the terrorist group’s activities. Given that their last target was a primary school ( his teeth grit at that; a primary school of all places; they seriously have nothing better to do than attempt to kill children alongside the supposed ‘fake’ readers. )

There’s some speculation as to where the next target is supposed to be, and attached alongside the case file is a list that has been circulating the detective agency with potential targets. Naturally, the first half of the list is easily recognized: well-known government buildings, military bases, locations of artificial reading production facilities that were _supposed_ to be top-secret. The latter half of the list is filled with more obscure names, mostly schools with the most recent attack, many of which require a separate Google search of their own to get their location and population.

Shuichi’s already noticed that, for the most part, these attacks have all been in relatively rural areas, not bigger cities. Close enough to them that word will still travel fast about the actions, but just far enough that, by the time a force is mobilized and on scene, the culprits are gone. The most recent school was just on the outskirts of a big commercial city, so it’s no surprise how much the population has been riled up by the attack. Shuichi has no doubt of course, it was surely done with that intention since they’ve been gaining ground.

Most attacks are also incredibly decisive. The school was almost entirely destroyed during the attack, every vehicle in the businessmen’s convoy a couple months back had been destroyed. They seem to relish in completely annihilating things. There was a case around two years ago, he recalls, in which a factory had been targeted but the local forces had been able to mobilize fast enough that only a fraction of building had been destroyed. It had been not even a week later that there was another attack and it had been destroyed. The method had been far more brutal than the first attack, but Shuichi had also noticed it seemed far less coordinated.

The terrorists were rather well-known for synchronized attacks and detonations, usually with intent to stun and incite fear, as well as to give off the illusion that there were far more forces than there actually were. Additionally, in the wreckage there were bodies recovered that were not recognized by those that survived. It was later been discovered that these were a couple of the attackers that had been caught in either their own attacks, or those of their comrades.

They were rather intent on finishing what they started, and Shuichi theorized that perhaps one day the police could make use of this information. With a bit of pride, he recalls this came true several months back, when an attempted terrorist attack went awry at a commerce building just out of recorded city limits. It had not gone down in one attack, so when the inevitable second came through, a good deal of the terrorists were caught before the building came down, and many had been taken in for interrogation.

Tilting his head up, Shuichi idly stares at the screen the powerpoint slide is projected on. The information that had been shared was helpful, but the detainees offered little hint towards future targets, even under…… _excruciating_ circumstances. 

A glance down toward a couple people that have been tapping away at their desks for awhile. Surely time was just ticking away just as quickly until they decided to mount the next attack, and more people got caught in the crossfire. While it’s all well and good knowing that he helped greatly in managing to capture some of the enemies, the stress that came with the relative publicity far outweighed it.

With an indignant huff, Shuichi tried blinking these thoughts away, glancing in the direction of the wall-mounted clock. Really? He’d only managed to twenty-five minutes with that miniature investigation. He almost wants to give up entirely and rest his head against the desk like his right hand neighbour had done at some point during his time on the phone.

A telltale chime in the air signifies some unlucky soul has been foolish enough to leave their phone on in the midst of world history. It’s not an entirely loud thing, far off enough that Shuichi doesn’t look down at his own in fear that it may have been his own. Clearly it wasn’t loud enough to get the professor’s attention, nor the right section of the lecture hall, only the unfortunate few of the left that have all begun to steal glances this way and that to find the culprit.

It’s surprisingly simple to pinpoint who it is, detective skills set aside. There’s only a couple people, barring those sleeping, that haven’t bothered lifting their heads. And among those few, there’s only one who Shuichi had noticed tapping away on his phone before he’s looked to his own.

One row down, and a good few chairs off to his left is a boy with wild black hair, dyed at the ends to a clearly unnatural shade of purple. Shuichi’s seen him a couple times around campus outside of this class, and christ, is he quite the figure.

Nothing against the guy, because he really doesn’t know him, but Shuichi genuinely wonders how he managed to get accepted. The Hope’s Peak University is a fairly prestigious campus, and one would expect it’s students to be semi-reserved. 

The absolute opposite of this guy.

On several occasions he’s seen him running around campus with a good few people running in pursuit. He’s even seen his dorm mate Kaito chasing after the guy, though he never bothered to ask why. Not only that, but his way of dressing is… certainly unique. Some days Shuichi has seen him show up in completely regular clothes, things like black or white long-sleeves and ripped jeans that would give off the impression he’s fond of monochrome colors. You get days like today where he’s wearing a white and orange ( neon orange, no less ) striped long-sleeve, with what have got to be the baggiest blue sweatpants Shuichi’s ever seen.

Honestly there is absolutely no way they aren’t at least three or four sizes too big.

And then you get the other days. Tacky checkered jackets, completely chaotic color combinations… the guy once walked into class in nothing but a snuggie. A snuggie.

One of Shuichi’s law teachers would rather die than let someone in their pajamas into class, let alone a snuggie.

His style is literally a mess, and that’s coming from Shuichi, who wears suits and formal button downs almost every day of his life. But there’s always one tie-in. That bandanna of his, in the same checkered pattern as that stupid puffy jacket. Whether it’s tied around his neck, or tucked halfway into his pocket when it isn’t able to, it’s always there.

He’s so deep in thought about fashion of all things, that he almost misses when the guy suddenly stands from his seat. It was kind of odd, because with how much the purple haired guy was typing away on his phone, one would think his phone would have chimed so many more times. Nonetheless, Shuichi’s response is the same: disdain evident in his expression. No doubt it’s another use of the bathroom as a means of getting away from class, just like many others earlier.

At the very least, it seems he’s leaving his backpack and notebook behind, which implies he’ll be back eventually. With a sigh, Shuichi leans back in his seat, and directs his gaze back to the powerpoint, locking his phone and sliding back into his pocket. He may as well attempt to pay more attention. His uncle will be incredibly disappointed if he finds out Shuichi was on his phone in class.

It’s around ten minutes later when the professor removes the pendant, and the form of Attila the Hun seemingly shimmers away from existence, just as expressionless as when he was read out. That’s another thing that Shuichi finds himself jealous of. With those semi-mass produced amulets, the ability is far and away weaker than the natural ability to. Where it’s restricted to stationary figures with the pendants, those with the ability to read from birth can move, breathe and act as they are portrayed in the novels.

The rather sudden screech of feedback from the microphone takes everyone, even the professor by surprise, and there are a good few of the sleepers who are shocked awake by it. And it looks like the ones that were staring aimlessly have been jolted back into reality by it.

“I have to apologize for that everybody, I’m not sure why it did that. But, while I have most of your attention, I’d like to share with you that the slideshow I’ve presented today will be available on my website as soon as class is over for you to study for your coming exam.”

There is a veritable sigh of relief that floods through the lecture hall as soon as that’s announced. Most of which is from the good seventy percent of people who were distracted throughout the presentation, Shuichi included.

“However, there is no better way to prepare for an exam than to take one, so if you all will please put away your cellular devices, my assistants will be passing out a quiz. You may all turn it in before you leave today.”

That sends the room into a sudden chaos. As the teaching assistants begin coming down from the back of the room, students all over the hall began looking around wildly, people talking to their neighbours who had never even spoken to one another before. In a sadistic sort of way, it was almost amusing to watch people fumbling over notes, trying in vain to pull up the professors website and see if it was online. Shuichi himself needs only look down to his notebook to begin preparing.

The school at large however, seemed to have other plans. As the assistants make it down to the base level, all the fire alarms go off, sending out three shrill sirens, ceasing for a moment, and then repeating.

Even with the dangerous implications of the fire alarm, there are so many students in the hall who began cheering and pumping their fists in the air. Despite having been fairly well prepared, Shuichi heaves a sigh of relief, and slowly begins to fold his notebook to close, when the overhead speakers crackle to life.

**[ ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS: THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THE CAMPUS IS NOW UNDER PARTIAL-LOCKDOWN. ALL PERSONNEL ARE TO LEAD THEIR STUDENTS TO THE COMMONS OF THEIR BUILDING, LOCATED ON THE GROUND FLOOR OF EVERY BUILDING. I REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A DRILL. NO STUDENTS ARE TO EXIT THEIR BUILDINGS UNTIL LOCKDOWN IS LIFTED. ]**

And suddenly in an instant, the relief that spread throughout class morphs into confusion, murmurs already circulating that give way to fear. A familiar buzz in his pocket tells Shuichi’s he’s received a text, and sure enough there is a host of them, from various members of the detective agency. Chief among them are several texts from his Uncle telling him to meet he and his associates at the entrance to the the Residence Hall North, the one that Shuichi’s dorm is in.

As the professor is beginning to call loud orders to the class, an attempt to begin the process of guiding people toward the exit, Shuichi jumps from his seat. Glancing down for a moment at his backpack and notebook, he decides better of it ( they’ll be there when he comes back ). He’s pushing through the crowd as politely as he can when the ground shakes, once, and then quickly devolves into something of a continuous one, lasting a couple seconds before it leads into an eerie calm.

It’s a madhouse now, and people around Shuichi are pushing to try and get down the aisles, running for the doors at the left and right of the room while the professor tries in vain to keep some semblance of order, yelling for people to exit the building and take the hall to the right, it should lead them down to the building’s commons area. He’s almost knocked to the ground three times before he gets to the professor, attempting to shout something over the rising chaos of students about how he needs to meet with his Uncle. Shuichi digs into his pockets, fumbling around for a second before wrenching out a badge similar to that of the local police force, and holds it for the professor to see before dashing to try and join the veritable sea of people trying to get through the doors.

Once he’s finally out, the badge is shoved back down into his pocket, and takes off down the left hall. There’s no classes that lead in this direction, only the skybridge linking this hall and the next one, so he’s sure he won’t run into further trouble. Everyone seems to be a little too focused on the mob-mentality fear to notice he’s running in the wrong way.

It’s as he’s speeding through the skybridge that he gets a look outside, and he damn near skids to a stop. To his left, the campus leads out toward the administrative buildings, and there are two large clouds of smoke billowing from them. Wildly turning to his right, the direction he needs to be running once he can get outside, leads to the residence halls, and there’s also a thick cloud of smoke rising.

He’s about to start running when, out the corner of his eye, he can see a mess of black and purple slinking out near the wall of the building. It takes a moment to process, almost pressing his face against the glass to realize that that’s the guy from class, the one who left for the bathroom, with another bag over his shoulder. And he’s trying to make his way back to the residence halls. Probably for some unbelievably stupid reason, like a forgotten laptop or something trivial.

With renewed vigor and just a dash of adrenaline, Shuichi tears off through the skybridge, turning the hall and taking steps two at a time once he gets to the staircase. He’s technically speaking someone who works closely with the police; he can’t allow anyone to go toward the scene of the crime… well one of them.

He practically throws himself against the door to get outside, and when he stumbles out onto the concrete walkway, he can just see off in the distance as the guy is rounding a corner, likely heading for the short-cut through the science building to get to the residence halls. He tries in vain to call out, shouting for him to stop, but the distance is to great to be noticed, so Shuichi begins sprinting in the direction he went.

When he gets to the science building, he pulls the door open as there’s another thundering boom off toward the front, and the resounding quake that follows sends him down to one knee, wincing. That had to be another explosion at the residence hall, and just through the darkened glass doors at the other end of the building, he can see the purple-haired guy running up to the door and pulling it open.

The door to the currently active hazardous zone that’s seen two major detonations in the last 10 minutes.

 _Shit_.


	2. The Hellhound King

He shouldn’t be here.

Every part of Shuichi’s body is shouting at him to run right back out the door he came in. After the initial bout of adrenaline floods out from his system in the wake of his chase, he vaguely can realize that his legs are shaking, and he honestly can’t tell if it’s because he’s tired from running, or if it’s the quaking of the building. The walls are littered with cracks from the vibrations above, and there is no shortage of dust that falls from the ceiling with every thump from the upper floors.

This building is familiar to him, the very residential hall that he’s lived in for the first half of this semester. There’s a door down the left hall near here that leads to the stairwell, one he’s taken every day for the past few months up to his room on the fourth floor. And everything about it is so unfamiliar. As he takes the first few shaky steps into the base lobby, he’s gripped with a deep-seated sense of shock and dread.

He’s seen scenes of crime like this before while working with his uncle; hell he’s seen even worse. Shuichi has seen grounds covered in rubble, seen entire interiors blackened with scorch marks, leaving only vague echoes of what they were. He’s seen dead bodies too, it’s a hard thing to avoid, and the first time he had he was so young he had almost thrown up at the sight of it. The feeling had gone away after repeatedly seeing them, he’d grown use to it ( or perhaps numbed was a better description ).

Shuichi doesn’t think he’ll be able to hold back the vomit if he finds a dead classmate in the building, someone he recognizes that he can put a name to the remains.

He shouldn’t focus on that though, not when he still needs to find the person he was chasing, but it’s suddenly so hard to focus. His breathing has gotten heavy, and his throat is dry from inhaling the dust. He has to move though, has to find them quickly, before this building inevitably begins coming down around them.

There’s another round of vibrations in his pocket, undoubtedly his uncle inquiring as to his whereabouts, or perhaps an update on the situation. Maybe they’ve come to the same conclusion Shuichi himself has: that this is the work of those terrorists. If that’s indeed the case, then there’s sure to be more explosions within the hour, and then after that, who know what kind of things they’re going to attack with next.

Finally able to consolidate his mess of a thought train enough that he can focus, he takes a few more steps. The further in he gets, the more he’s shocked at how disparate it is to the original. He walked these halls just this morning, when the walls were a bright, flawless blue instead of the scraped up, dusty mess they are now. He passes by the elevator on his way to the stairway, and for a brief second pauses to stare at it. It’d surely be quicker… if it worked. It would be so much easier to click the button, get in the elevator and ride up to the highest floor and make his way down…

And then his mind begins to offer in, the suddenness of the flickering lights overhead, the rumbling and shaking as the elevator comes to a sudden halt. It imagines him banging against the door, pressing any and all of the buttons to no avail, and the suddenness of the drop. A feeling of almost weightlessness mixed in with the shrill screeching of the elevator against the rails completely drowning out his shouts for help until…

Shuichi’s head shakes wildly, and his breath comes out even more heavy, as though no matter how much he breathes in, he can’t get enough air and he’s beginning to get dizzy. He stumbles to the side, a hand bracing against the scraped wall across from the elevator. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to calm himself, tries to slow his breathing.

He doesn’t want to look at the elevator anymore.

He hopes nobody tried to use it to get out of the building.

Shuichi stumbles forward, anywhere that would take him away from the elevator. Further down the hall, it’s already begun looking more ruined. There’s a fair bit of ceiling plaster that’s peeled off and fallen, as well as bits of ceiling boards that have broken on their fall. It almost seems convenient, even the pieces that have presumably come from the center of the hall ended up near the wall somehow, left in their wake bits of what he assumes is insulation foam and haphazard sweepings of dust.

That gets him to pause and do a double take. The dust and smaller pieces of boards and foam have indeed been swept away. The direction is all aimed toward the wall, but there are different angles, and the space between the lines of the swept dust is different. Swept away with a shoe then? But that would mean there were other people. At least two besides himself and potentially the other guy in here. The police hadn’t shown up yet, so it couldn’t have been them, and it was still around midday, so all students would have been in classes, save for those that either slept though or just didn’t bother showing up.

The terrorists then? That makes his confidence waver, and gets him to take a deep breath. He hadn't thought of that in his fear induced state but it was entirely possible that the terrorists were still in the building, especially since the detonations were on the upper levels of the building. They could very well have been coming down the building as he thought, and he is only one person versus at least two.

Almost as if on cue, Shuichi can hear scraping, faint and far away but still very much there. Someone continuing what they were doing here and sweeping away the mess. Likely for the people upstairs who would need to make a swift getaway. It would definitely make it easier if they didn’t need to worry about tripping over anything.

The closer he gets to the sound of sweeping, he can start hearing the sound of other things as well, softer to be missed further away but becoming clearer now. He can hear the clinking of something metal on metal, perhaps a buckle or something like that, and he can hear voices now. 

A deep masculine one, as well as a feminine one. Based on stereotypes of size, that would fit the two sweep sizes back near the elevator. This revelation makes Shuichi reach to his side feeling around his belt line for the hidden holster. He manages to find the grip quickly wrapping his hand around the handle and yanking it out. As he closes in on the voices, practically pressed up to the wall before the corner, he shakily brings it up to chest level, resting an index finger flat over the trigger guard.

He doesn’t actually intend to use it-- he’d only manage to hit one of the two, and being the foolish headlong for the right thing person he is, he ran right out to try and find the source of the explosions. In the process forgetting his extra air cartridges, effectively leaving him the option to shoot off one round, drop the gun and hightail it away, hopefully escaping the remaining terrorist.

Inching closer still, Shuichi stifles a cough, for fear of alerting them to his position. He’s close enough now that he can understand them fairly clearly, and he has to be toeing the line of what is safely out of sight and what’s not. They’re speaking quietly about something pertaining to the upper levels, the rough area of the detonations and the results. He’s about to peek around the corner when a particular set of conversation lines catches his attention.

“Have you heard back from Kinghorse or Rookbane yet?”

“Nah, not yet. I assume they’re still busy with the upper floors. They shouldn’t have too much trouble though; there shouldn’t be anyone here yet. How’s it looking outside?”

It’s so small a thing, but it gives a good amount of information, some that Shuichi finds immediately valuable. So there are at least four people in the building? Two that are still on a higher level… perhaps setting up more charges? With a shaky, deep breath he leans that little bit further, head just poking out around the corner to peer down the hall.

As he expected, there are two people there, and their attire is so unbelievably similar it’s uncanny. Both are wearing entirely white clothes, straps wrapped around the lower arm sections, and bottom it out with black shoes. With the activities of the recent events, their white uniforms are stained with dust, the lower sections of the cloth stained into an darker brown. The feminine voice belongs, presumably, to the shorter of the two, a young looking girl with brown, twintail styled hair that almost brushes her calves. From where he can see, she’s definitely got something in her hands, but he can’t quite tell what it is. The other figure is a much larger, much more…. Rotund figure, who attire looks less like top and bottom, and more long-sleeved bodysuit with suspenders wrapping round a thin belt. From here Shuichi can see exactly what’s in his hands: a phone of some kind, tilted just so that the glare from a nearby window obscures what’s on it.

“The Black Pawn tells me all is well over where he is. As expected, the campus security is amassing, and there’s tell of the police mobilizing much quicker than expected.”

“They expected the attack then? They’re getting a little better. Maybe by the time they get bold enough to target the somewhere like the White House or the Imperial Palace, they’ll have their act together.”

Shuichi’s eyes narrow, and he almost wants to spit out a retort at the girl’s comment. She has the audacity to say something like that as though it’s funny? What kind of sick humor…

“ _Hey, you!_ ”

It’s so sudden, so loud against the otherwise quiet talking and the silent halls that Shuichi shakes something terrible, and his hands fumble, dropping the taser gun. It’s not one of the two voices he recognised from the hall, and it certainly didn’t come from there… rather it came from the far end of the major hall.

And sure enough when Shuichi’s eyes shoot up to look down the hall from his place at the wall, there’s a similarly dressed figure standing in a wide stance far across the way, an accusing finger pointing wildly. He can’t get a clear description of the person though, face and most of his black hair obscured behind a large, asymmetrically designed mask. Perhaps it’s the depth and the dust in his system that’s confusing him, but this person seems around his own height and build, not exactly the figure to back up using such a commanding tone. Nonetheless, it seems to have the the desired effect, and he can see the two from the corner of his eye begin to move into action.

And no sooner does he see this, does he act completely on instinct. Perhaps it would have been better to bend down and quickly get ahold of the taser again, but his body’s first reaction is something far simpler: run.

And run he does.

He turns abruptly, and bolts with intensity the likes to rival his earlier chase. Adrenaline pumps in his ears, a deafening rush that makes his head hurt to go with a throat burning from the air-dust mix he’s panting out. Vaguely, he can make out some shouting behind him that only spurs him further on, some kind of mix between ‘wait’ ‘stop’, and then that same newcomer’s voice telling, presumably the other two, to stay there and guard the stairwells, or something like that.

Logically, when Shuichi gets to the commons area of the residential hall, he should be beelining for the exit, to try and rendezvous with whatever officers have managed to make their way. However, the flight switch in his brain is too locked in, and getting to the doors would only slow him down in opening them, they were marked with _pull_ after all. But the stairwell doors are double-acting ones and should, in theory, move quicker than normal when he throws all his weight against them. So rather than logic, he instead stutters for a moment in thought, then taking off down the other hall. He can still hear the shouting, but only one is consistently maintaining distance, the one person chasing him, presumably.

Damn, he wishes he had grabbed that taser before running.

The door is in sight now, a welcome sight amongst the far more messy hall. It’s a fearful run for Shuichi, almost tripping over sections where the ceiling boards have fallen and no been swept away. So they only made it as far as that opposite hall. That was at least some good news for him.

So too was the fact that, as he hoped, the door to the stairwell did indeed rush open from what could very well have been a body slam against it. All but ramming his side through, his momentum carries him fully through the door and beyond, colliding harshly with the guard rail of the stairs. It’s not some immediate sharp pain, so for a moment, Shuichi thinks he’s gotten off scot free. It’s only when the corresponding side’s leg raises to try and make it onto the second step that the pain appears, and so suddenly all at once.

He lets out a shout of pain, and stumbles forward to his knees on a higher step. Pressing a hand against the spot does nothing but agitate it further, and his hand whips away as though it had been pressed to suntouched cement. Gritting his teeth does little to alleviate his pain, but he has to keep going. Who knew what would happen if that clown mask caught up to him. He momentarily entertains the idea of biting his tongue, and the sharp pain is sensation enough to drag his attention away from where he’s sure a bruise is already forming along his side. He can’t keep it up for a long time though, it hurts almost more so than the forming bruise, and if he tries biting and harder, he’s certain he’ll start tasting his own blood.

The second floor door is approached with far less bravado, and he can barely say that he nudges it open as he does practically fall into it. The second floor is, arguably, a larger mess than the first. There are more ceiling boards littering the grounds, and Shuichi theorizes that the explosion must have been on on either the floor above, or the fourth one, because there are even some holes in the ceiling where rubble has fallen through and caved halfway into the flooring. He can no longer hear the shouting, even anything echoing in the stairwell area either, so perhaps he somehow managed to lose the clown face.

He’s stumbling forward into the second floor commons room, looking up when he notices that the ceiling has been blown out in the center. There’s a far larger hole, and it seems even seared away at the edges. The location of one of the detonations perhaps? It would make sense, since there’s no shortage of rubble here, and perhaps some of it had even been blown clear out the now shattered windows.

It couldn’t have been some kind of homemade explosive though… or if it was, the terrorists had enlisted the use of some unique smoke grenades. There’s some greenish mist frothing around on the upper floor from what he can see through the ceiling hole, and it’s rather thick. Surely he should have been able to see the hole the explosive would have made in the floor above, but there is little visible through the dense smoke.

He starts moving again, hobbling forward toward the hole, when the ominous fog begins to lick over the makeshift crater’s edge, beginning to spill downwards into the second floor. He reels back too late to avoid inhaling some of the fog, and he finds it to be an eerily cool gas, definitely not the kind of smoke the namesake bomb would emit. It can’t be poisonous or immediately harmful either, there is no sudden burn in his throat that overcomes that of the dust he’s breathed in, and there is no immediate odor that he might be able to identify it with.

A hand comes up to wave it away frantically regardless, and he’s almost immediately met with resistance from his body. The movement is not exactly sluggish enough to warrant extreme fear, but it’s enough to be noticeably slower and less effective than it usually would. His head too begins to hurt again from focusing on the movement. When he brings that same hand up to his face, eyes closing as he tries massaging his temples, he swears for a moment that he can hear something. It almost sounds like the way he was rushing breath from between grit teeth in the stairwell earlier. It escalates into something more sinister, and his eyes snap open to try and find the source.

Still it grows, into something of a feral growl, and while his head protests it, his head whips this way and that, trying to find the source. It seemingly gets closer, and Shuichi can feel the hairs on his back stand on end, and his body begin to quiver uncontrollably. There is nothing still, nothing on the floor that he can see when the growling escalates again, a harsh snap of jaws and a violent, guttural bark that gets his attention from above.

It takes a bit of focus, something he’s sorely lacking at this point with everything going on, to notice that among that eerie green vapor, there is a pair of unnatural, red eyes staring him down. They are low to the ground, and move slowly with what he presumes is the rest of the body of whatever it is, slinking around the hole in a circle motion that’s not unlike that of wolves or sharks that have found their target. Or perhaps a vulture would be better in this case, circling ominously from above on a target that is surely just inches from death. He’s certainly in no shape to refute the point.

All the adrenaline from earlier has fled his system, and in its place is only a cold feeling of horror that creeps its way in through the cracks to freeze and expand them like ice. Feet move backwards, one shaky step at a time, slow and as calculated as he can manage; who knew what sudden moves might force the creature into doing. His breathing is far less controlled, and he can feel himself hyperventilating, breathing in even more of that vapor and dust and making his head spin painfully so.

It’s a moment that feels as though it could be suspended indefinitely, but it all comes crashing down. There is a much larger piece of the ceiling near the corner, and his feet slowly inching back bump into it. His balance shifts suddenly, and when a hand shoots up to try and right himself, Shuichi know’s he’s well and truly fucked up. The beast above shouts in fury, and those red eyes suddenly move forward with the vague outline of the monster, landing on the commons’ floor with a sound not wholly different to that of thunder. It doesn’t stop there though, as the ground seems to shudder beneath the weight of the monster’s paws, dragging it closer and closer toward him.

Shuichi doesn’t even remember falling, but there is a constant ache in his tailbone he cannot remember being there before he begins frantically sliding himself backwards. His feet skid against the mess of rubble and dust on the floor, making his retreat that much more ineffective, and the pain in his side has returned with a vengeance.

He can see it so very clearly now, a mess of black on the figure of a hound, looking more like wrinkled and torn flesh than actual fur like any normal hound. But this is blatantly no ordinary hound, with lips seemingly curled back into a perpetual snarl, revealing a top and bottom row of long, yellowed teeth, all in the likeness of fangs. Drool and mist alike is slavering from the beasts jaws, sickening green. This close up, Shuichi cannot help but look into the monster’s eyes, gleaming blood red things with no evident pupil or retina. All that he can make out is some small mess of barely darker red in the centers, like someone had dropped some color into it. The air itself seems to vibrate with the intensity of it’s growling, and then it stops advancing.

For a moment Shuichi thinks that it’s gone still, but it’s only for second. The upper body of the beast lowers closer to the ground, muscles bunching in its legs and Shuichi can tell exactly what’s about to happen.

He’s going to get mauled by god-knows-what ever this hellhound of a beast is, all because he wanted to try and help someone avoid entering a live detonation zone. He’s heard stories about how life was supposed to flash before ones eyes when they’re about to die, or that things should happen in slow motion before his very eyes, but nothing of that sort happens. He’s only left paralyzed in fear, looking on this hound as it prepares to lunge for him.

Up close, it’s a morbid sense of fascination. He wants to look away, to squeeze his eyes shut and breath his last few breaths before that darkness becomes permanent, but he can’t. There’s something almost familiar about it, but he’s certainly never seen it before. Paws thunder down again as it rushes for him, and ever so close, he can’t help this nagging feeling that he should know where this monster comes from.

The snapping of its jaws is loud, nery but a few centimeters from it’s face so that when he inhales his last, he can smell the beast’s breath… it’s not quite as rancid as he was lead to think. Where he not so consumed by the fact that he’s about to be torn apart, he may have found the faintest scent of mint remarkably odd.

Even deafening to his ears as the hound is, something else yet rings above it. A shout, firm and commanding.

“ _Basker!_ ”

Pale golds widen in curiosity as the hound rapidly begins to disappear in front of him. It begins at its short tail moving along and melting away his paws and building up towards its backside. It reaches Shuichi just as the process completes and it’s the ugly mug that is the last thing to disappear, leaving only a rush of chilly wind to wash over him.

He’s astonished, drawing a blank for the first time in several years. It feels as though tens of hundreds of thoughts should be flooding his head but it’s just…. Nothing Slowly his head turns up to get a good look at the other, and much to his surprise, he’s met with the white cloth and jarring clown mask of his earlier pursuer. 

Instinctively, Shuichi opens his mouth to question the action, the reasoning, but his mind has only just begun catching up to the rest of him, and he has to try a couple times before he can get out something even as simple: “Why?”

The sudden laugh barking out from behind the mask is jarring and threatening in a way, and Shuichi stiffens suddenly, almost attempting to reach for a taser in the holster that he remembers is no longer there.

“Why? Well geez, you should know how much of a hassle it is to get blood out of carpets Mister Detective!” An accusing finger is jabbed in his direction. “Not to mention, bloody pawprints on this pristine white uniform would be an absolute drag.” 

The guy keeps firing off reasons, but Shuichi is only half listening. His brows are furrowed in confusion as he stares down the clown mask. Now that he’s closer than several yards away, he can see that the strands of hair coming out of hiding from behind the mask is not entirely black, but a violet toward the ends, likely from dye. The voice too is something semi familiar, and suddenly the pieces fall in place.

A finger of his own raises defiantly against the guy.

“You’re from my class! I recognize you!”

It’s quiet, but solid, and is enough to make the purple-haired guy back off with his remarks. Maybe even behind that mask of his, he’d be frowning, or glaring, or maybe even with how his laugh sounded, he’d be grinning wickedly.

“It’s really _not_ cool to interrupt people you know, especially after I saved you from being puppy chow and all, sheesh. You know, this kind of thanks is why chivalry is dying.”

It’s said so casually, as if he were sitting at a dinner table or somewhere out with friends it’s worrying. Not to mention, in Shuichi’s opinion, it’s incredibly tactless. But he isn’t given time to respond before he’s off talking again.

“Buuuuuuut, anyway that aside- you gotta leave. As you can see, I have neglected the household cleaning, and this building is in no shape for visitors. My guy upstairs is kinda’ fighting an uphill battle, literally, and it’s probably gonna bring the roof down. And y’know maybe a floor or two with the way those other guys are acting.”

“Wait, guys upstairs… you mean the terrorists? You’ve seen them, you know where they’re at?”

“Easy there detective, this is my interrogation.” Nonetheless, both his hands come up in an uninterested shrug. “But yeah, I’ve seen ‘em. I was trying to see if there were any more, but it’s just the two. Pretty ballsy to think that only two could reduce this thing to rubble. Enough of that though!

You’re distracting me! Totally uncool! I ought’a have my people downstairs deal with you for deceiving me like that!”

There’s a teasing lilt to his tone that makes it less threatening the words entail, and Shuichi’s head quickly shakes.

“No, you’re not doing that. You- you just confirmed for me that there are only two terrorists in this attack. It won’t be necessary to have the entire force storming the building. Especially with the structural integrity compromised as it is, it’ll only end up in more potential casualties!”

There’s a newfound vigor in his words, and despite his pains prodding at him insistantly he presses a hand on the floor to help himself get back upright. Something that helps put into perspective the height difference… funny, he seemed at least taller than this when Shuichi had been fleeing for his life…

“Weeeeeell if you wanna tag along for the party, I can’t exactly say no since you’re some kind of 'big shot official',” Said with an antagonistic set of air quotations that make Shuichi shift from foot to foot. “But if you’re gonna do that, you gotta stick close. Wouldn’t do for you to get targeted by Rookbane because he saw you following me from behind!”

Funny, Shuichi would have expected more of an attempt at interference. It seemed as though this guy and his friends… associates? Teammates? Whatever they were, weren’t anything official, or even something like a disciplinary committee… which is surprising given how seemingly comfortable they are in this scenario.

It’s not as though Shuichi has any more options, so he gives a curt nod in agreement.

“Fine. What’s your name? I need to be able to get your attention if something goes awry, or if I notice something.”

“Nishishi, trying to ferret out my name so you can report me back to the police for interference? Just call me Kinghorse, detective!”

“My name is _Shuichi_.”

“Nice to meet ya’, _detective_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from 'The Hellhound King' as written by Lori Devoti, the fifth of six books in the Unbound series!
> 
> Anyone want to hazard a guess as to who / what the creature Ouma had for this chapter was, before he formally reads it out again next chapter (wink wink nudge nudge)
> 
> And! As I mentioned in the last chapter, I'm always open to ideas for things you think would be good to be read out of books!

**Author's Note:**

> Hooray, it's unbeta'd and the intro chapter was written at 3am. While this is not immediately related to the fic, I would love to hear some examples of creatures or people that you would like to see read out of something here! Whether it be read from a good guy, or one of the bad ones!


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